Within these pages lies a territory where fear thinks, remembers, and descends into delirium. Edgar Allan Poe, the undisputed master of the modern short story, explores the darkest regions of the human mind: guilt that refuses to be silenced, obsession that leads to madness, death that lurks behind a closed door or beats relentlessly beneath the floor.

The tales gathered in The Best Horror Stories do not rely on cheap shocks, but on a deeper, more enduring unease. Poe transforms the ordinary into menace, love into delirium, and reason into its own enemy. Each story is a descent into the inexplicable, told with a hypnotic and precise prose that continues to unsettle readers more than a century later.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic, regarded as one of the most influential figures in world literature and a pioneer of psychological horror and the modern short story. Author of enduring works including The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe led a life shaped by poverty, personal loss, and a mysterious early death.